Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two (3 page)

“Mura-an claims knowledge—”

“But it has never been proven, Ggolen!” exclaimed Llor. “Great leiil, I beg thee not to turn to them. They are a devious house and power mad. They cannot be trusted.”

“No, and they have ties to Kkanthor,” said Ggolen.

For once the two men agreed on something. Asan tried to hold down impatience.

“I don’t intend to trust them,” he said. “But if they have technicians, then I want an alliance.”

“Great leiil! It cannot be done without losing the Soot’dla and they—”

“I know,” said Asan with a sigh. “They have food.”

“Indeed, great leiil,” said Yvn from the crowd, “it is not something to dismiss. The fields of the Soot’dla feed Ruantl. It is unwise to lose their support.”

“We won’t lose it,” said Asan.

The confidence in his voice made them glance at each other. Asan gazed across the crowd. Somewhere among the cloaks and masks was a Soot’dla spy. Asan smiled to himself. Dame Agate thought she had him in a corner. It was time to let her know otherwise.

“Without the guidance of Anthi, growing food won’t be as easy for the Soot’dla as it has been,” he said, and listened as gasps of horror spread through the men.

Yvn raised his hands. “Then we are truly doomed.”

“No,” said Asan sharply. “Anthi will return.”

“When? She has spoken to thee again, great leiil? Praise to Anthi!”

Asan stood silent, scornful of their eagerness. They were superstitious idiots. They could not even understand that Anthi was just a life-support computer, not a goddess. He had no intention of telling them that all he had to do was switch her back on.

“It is not our place to question the ways of Anthi,” said Ggolen at last, and the questions ceased.

“No, it is not,” said Asan. “Anthi will return when it is time, not before. We’ll take the most direct route across the Outerlands, flank our formation with the transports, and retake Altian central. The outer sectors are—”

“Forgive me, leiil. Does thou mean vectors?”

“No, I do not! Vector is a mathematical term indicating direction. Sector means an area.”

An abashed silence fell. Then Ggolen bowed.

“We beg thy pardon for our ignorance, great one. We have tried to keep the words of the ancient days true.”

Asan cleared his throat, a little ashamed of his irritation. “Very well. As I was saying, the outlying areas of Altian are unimportant. And we will contact the matriarch of the Mura-an for alliance negotiations. Also, as soon as that is accomplished I want to see representatives of the Spandeen.”

“Those tricksters!” said Ggolen in displeasure, ignoring the growl from Llor who was of that ancestry.

“I am not asking for your approval, cintan,” snapped Asan.

The Spandeen were merchants who traveled farther than anyone else. They would be able to tell him about the southern continent.

Ggolen stepped back with a gesture of apology. Llor tried to smooth ruffled tempers by tapping the mapboard.

“Forgive my failure to understand, great leiil, but why use the transports in the way thou has ordered? Surely it would be better to send them ahead.”

“Why? They are armored. They might as well be used as protection against Bban attacks.”

“But how?”

Asan sighed. “Rig delayed bombs and drop them out the rear exhaust ports. That ought to discourage the Bban’jen.”

“Indeed.” Llor sounded awed. “What a tremendous innovation—”

“It’s a stopgap junk tactic used by fighters who’ve run out of real ammunition,” said Asan impatiently. “Those transports have mounts for heavy guns. Too bad no one can remember how to make replacements.”

“We beg thy forgiveness, great leiil, for our failure to maintain technology—”

“Yes,” snapped Asan, and stepped off the central platform. He didn’t want to listen to excuses. “Prepare the jen. We depart at dawn.”

They snapped to attention and saluted. “By the will of Asan!”

He strode out through the men who moved aside quickly for him. It was a relief to be done with the meeting at last. No more war councils for a while, he promised himself.

Fflir waited for him outside in the dusty expanse of the transport pad carved out of the mountainside. The visible sun was already low. He’d missed most of the afternoon. But at least his porter was ready. Beside it stood five others and a cadre of guards to protect him. Asan cocked his head at these.

“Do not protest, great leiil,” said Fflir with a laugh muffled by his mask. The sunlight shone on the thin bronze insets marking his rank, house, and allegiance. A cold wind whipped out his cloak. “We must go with thee. There have been eight Bban’n killed around the perimeters since the last dawn. They know we are about to leave. Season is over. There is no surprise to it.”

Asan tapped his fingers ruefully on his wrist and was about to answer when a distant vibration brought his head around. He listened, spreading out his rings.

“Leiil? What it is?”

Asan snapped his rings down tightly. “Metal craft approaching 280 kps.”

“Forgive me, leiil. I did not understand thy words.”

With a blink Asan realized he had spoken in Standard. Excitement flared through him, and he whipped out his fire-rod as he ran to his porter and fitted his knees and heels to the controls. It roared to life beneath him and he lifted while Fflir and the guards were still running for theirs.

A gong sounded across the pad, and the maintenance crew who had been playing the Bban game of kri-gri sprang to their feet. A man ran toward Asan, waving his arms.

“Warning! Warning! A craft approaches—”

His words were drowned out by the scream of a ship flashing overhead, a long needle of silver reflecting the sun before it vanished behind the mountains.

“It went into the lower ridges!” shouted Fflir. “Great Anthi, what was it?”

“A ship!” Asan threw back his head and laughed. “A real, honest-to-God ship. Come on!”

“Wait, leiil!” Fflir’s porter swung in front of Asan’s. He held out a hand. “Whose is it? Where does it come from?”

“Who in Merdar cares? It’s a space-lander, and I want it.”

Tlar’n were pouring out of the stronghold, staring at the sky and gesturing. Asan lifted his porter at maximum pulse and flew into the valley below the stronghold with Fflir and the cadre flanking him.

By the time they topped a low ridge and found the ship resting crookedly at the end of a long, smoking groove, Asan’s excitement had cooled to caution. His gloved fingers lifted and the cadre hovered on either side of him. Asan’s eyes narrowed.

“GSI configuration,” he said angrily. “They must have finally heard Saunders’ distress beacon.”

“Please explain, leiil.”

“GSI stands for the Galactic Space Institute. They rule many, many systems. They are my enemy.”

The cadre stiffened as one man, and Fflir said, “Then they are our enemy as well.”

“Good. It was a poor landing. Either they were in trouble, or their pilot is a fool. But it looks intact. I want it to stay that way, Fflir. No Bban’n are to get near it.”

“We shall guard it to the blood, noble leiil.” Fflir spoke briefly into his wrist communicator to summon more men.

Below, the vessel’s hatch opened.

“Let us attack, leiil!”

“No.” Asan grabbed Fflir’s wrist. “They know we’re here.”

“But they have not yet come out. Have they rings to sense us?”

“No. But they have machines that can scan us just as well.”

“A small matter. We’ll blank ourselves out.”

“No. They’ll still read the porters. We must attack on foot in the Bban way.”

“There are eight inside the transport, Pon Fflir,” said one of the men.

“And six of us.” Fflir glanced at Asan. “Is it sufficient?”

“Tlar’n against humans? Yes.”

Asan landed his porter behind the ridge with a soft whine of air. His boots sank into the corrosive sand, and he crouched low, moving along the ridge just below the crest. Fflir followed at his heels.

The cadre split into two pairs and ranged out in opposite directions, running fast and silently over the sand. Asan paused to make sure of his position. On the other side of the ridge he could hear voices and the scrape of movement. His fingers worked rapidly, and Fflir tapped his arm in acknowledgment.

With his fire-rod in one hand and his jen-knife in the other, Asan sprang up into the air and flipped himself over the crest of the ridge in a tucked roll that landed him halfway down the other side on his feet. He fired before the humans could react. One man in the hated green GSI uniform dived to one side and scrambled for cover beneath the ramp. He fired a strifer, and Fflir fell with a cry.

Asan knew the next shot would be for him. Gathering himself, he seizerted a split second before the man fired and reappeared next to the ship.

“Choi-hana!”
He used the Bban cry, and with a grunt the human rolled over and fired at him.

Asan snapped out his rings to a small point, deflecting the spit of death. The human screamed, and Asan struck swiftly with his jen-knife, stabbing through his arm to pin him to the ground. He kicked the strifer out of reach and ducked out from under the ramp in time to see his cadre finish off the remaining humans.

Asan raised his fist in victory, and they returned the salute.

“Noble leiil…”

That choking gasp came from Fflir. Asan ran to kneel at his side. Fflir was fumbling to draw his jen-knife.

“Steady my hand, leiil, that I may spread my blood honorably—”

“Hush, fool,” said Asan gruffly, wresting the knife away. He tapped Fflir’s mask in reassurance, then pressed a hand to Fflir’s side where blood flowed through the rip in his tunic. “You won’t die from this. Their weapons don’t eat away your flesh like our fire-rods do.”

“Ah…” Fflir sank back limply.

“Help him.” Asan beckoned to two of the guards. “You and you, see to our prisoner. I want him kept alive for interrogation.”

“By the will of Asan.”

Asan focused his rings into a protective shield and cautiously moved up the ramp. The ship was a corvette with most of its size taken up by powerful engines. Its configuration class was used by the military arm of the GSI for courier runs and fleet convoy scouts. Eight crewers were probably the maximum number it had room for, but he hadn’t lived this long by making stupid assumptions.

Half crouched, he moved silently into the belly of the ship. Giving his eyes a chance to adjust to the shadows, he smelled the scents of recycled air, metal, and zine. His lips curved at old memories of when he was a human too. Pausing by a ladder, he rested his hand upon a rung. Even through his gauntlets he could tell the difference between how humans stressed their metals and how the Tlar’n fashioned theirs. He climbed up the ladder slowly, his senses focused.

No mind touched his rings. But not all GSI crewers were human.

His head and shoulders emerged into a tight turnaround, with the bridge ladder on his left and crew quarters on his right. He checked out the living quarters, then continued up to bridge level.

Instrumentation panels blinked on standby. Harness webbing lay tossed across seats as though the crew had been too excited to stow them according to regulations.

He paused there, just drinking in the sight. Until how, he hadn’t realized how much he missed this. He tucked away his fire-rod and pulled off his mask and gauntlets. A whisper of tanked air touched his face from the ventilators. He ran his fingers along the navigation station.

“Blaise Omari was one of the best,” he whispered, remembering those two years of service on the SIS
Forerunner
and its subsequent crash here in his effort to escape detention.

A steady blip on the sensor screen told him this crew had indeed been homing in on one of Saunders’ distress beacons. Asan frowned and switched it off. Then he sat down in the captain’s chair. It didn’t fit his tall body. The contours were all wrong.

He rose to his feet in annoyance and called up the last log entry. The words came out of the speaker in curt Standard: “Acknowledging instructions per beacon one. Log buoy launched to mother ship. McKey called in the split time for his ship. We are to separate formation three miles into atmosphere. He will acknowledge rendezvous with beacon two…”

Asan switched off the log. He didn’t like the sound of any of that. The GSI hadn’t just sent in an explorer; they were coming in with force. Damn Saunders and her regulations; why couldn’t she have left things alone?

But just the same, he now had a ship of his own. His gaze swept around the bridge again with satisfaction. This would suit his purposes perfectly. All he had to do was figure out a way to warn off the GSI.

Asan snorted at himself. He might as well try to tow away the black hole of this binary system. Now that the GSI had finally ventured into the Uncharted Zone, they would chart farther. And once they found a promising world, they never released their grip.

His hand clenched. Ruantl was his. And he would keep it, even if he had to take on the whole Institute.

It was one thing to sit and gloat over his prize. It was another to let the ship be corroded by the sand. Being grounded here for several hours would damage the hull beyond recovery.

Asan frowned as he paced the confines of the bridge. He could not fit the ship in the transport pad. They’d explored most of the caverns during season, but none were large enough for a hangar.

Flipping open a locker bin, he found ration packets and grinned. He broke one open and munched on the contents. Once he had hated fiber bars and Q-cals. Right now, they tasted just like home.

He returned to the communications bank. There were two people in mind who could help him with his distribution problem. Either would be eager to strike up a partnership, especially for a healthy percentage of the profits, and both could supply him with the mining equipment he would need.

Martok had the widest range of contacts. Asan uneasily remembered the old days. BLZ-80-4163, Tobei, and Blaise Omari…all those identities of Asan’s past had worked for Martok. In some ways Martok knew too much about him; the crime lord also thought that he owned him. But Asan belonged to himself. Perhaps he’d better go with Lin Ranje and the pirates of Scorpio constellation.